The present invention relates generally to an entirely visual technique for guiding travelers based on using photographs to provide the guidance, and more particularly to methods and a system for obtaining, processing, distributing and using photographs of way points selected along preferred routes to guide a motorist from one or more predetermined starting points to one or more predetermined destinations.
Motorists have been grappling with the problems of traveling along unfamiliar roads and highways for as long as vehicles and roadways have been in use. Answers to the well known and frustrating questionsxe2x80x94where are we? did I drive past my turn off? which way do I go at the next intersection?, plus a host of othersxe2x80x94are increasingly difficult to get as new roads multiply and traffic gets progressively heavier. Enormous amounts of time, money and human energy have been expended worldwide for a wide range of efforts directed to addressing the many facets of guiding motorists. In recent years these efforts have been moving in the direction of increasingly complex electronic systems to meet the needs of giving timely and accurate guidance to travelers.
Descriptions of typical prior art devices and systems for providing real time guidance to travelers are found in a number of U.S. patents.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,115,398 to DeJong discloses displaying navigation data for a motor vehicle which uses a real time image of the local environment (taken by a camera mounted on the vehicle) onto which is superimposed arrows indicating the direction for a motorist to follow.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,018,697 to Morimoto et al. provides a teaching of superimposing turn information on traffic-related, computer generated images to provide characteristic features of an intersection.
Three U.S. patents assigned to the AISIN AW Co., Ltd disclose the use of photographs as part of complex vehicle navigation systems. These are U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,067,502 and 6,035,257, both to Hayashi et al., and U.S. Pat No. 4,937,752 to Namba et al. Each of these discuss xe2x80x9csuccessively displaying photographs showing intersectionsxe2x80x9d but all xe2x80x98photographsxe2x80x99 are computer retrieved from storage and are presented on a display device (CRT-like) mounted in the vehicle.
Despite the generous amount of innovation exhibited in these prior art approaches, there has not been widespread acceptance or public usage of the proposed systems. There are many reasons why the traveling public has not been attracted to them. First, due to their complexity and the high degree of expertise needed to set up and operate them, they do not appeal to the average motorist. Then, the costs and difficulty of retrofitting their complex components into a typical car are not considered cost effective due to their comparatively infrequent need. Perhaps the most important reason for their low acceptance rate of complex systems, however precise they are, is just thatxe2x80x94their complexity. As travel guidance systems become more complex, possibly because of the increasing precision they offer, they become increasingly less intuitive to use. That is, the user must learn and carry in his/her head a complex set of system rules, may be required to manipulate many controls in proper sequences, and needs to mentally correlate electronically formatted outputs with the actual roads and highways whizzing past. It is precisely this set of needsxe2x80x94low cost, simplicity, highly intuitivexe2x80x94that the present visual addressing system admirably meets. Thus, a long felt need for a simple, low cost, easy to learn and use, entirely visual approach to guiding travelers is satisfied by the present invention.
It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to provide improved methods and apparatus for guiding travelers between specified starting points and destinations which overcome the disadvantages of the prior art approaches.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a method of guiding a motorist using a sequence of photographs to provide a simple, highly intuitive and entirely visual means of travel guidance.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide a system for obtaining, processing, distributing and using a plurality of photographs, and associated textual and graphic directions, to assist in guiding a traveler between predetermined starting points and destinations.
A yet further object of the present invention is to provide an entirely visual method of guiding a motorist using a plurality of sequentially arranged way point photographs in hard copy form to guide an end user along a preferred route between one or more predetermined starting points and one or more predetermined destinations.
In a baseline method for providing point-to-point visual guidance to a traveler, motorist, or end user, a series of way point photographs are compiled into a pictograph such that the physical arrangement of the individual photographs provide the desired guidance. The arrangement provides way points in natural driving order for ease of use. The pictographs may be hard copies provided as a single sheet, a fold-up brochure, or in booklet form regenerated from downloaded digital data. The photographs are produced by physically traversing the routes between predetermined starting points and desired destinations and capturing scenes of selected way points using a variety of scene capturing devices. These photographs are then annotated, processed, stored and subsequently retrieved as needed for delivery to an end user. In an advanced regional method for providing guidance between a plurality of starting points and a plurality of destinationsxe2x80x94all within the boundaries of the regionxe2x80x94a large number of way point photographs are taken and compiled into a xe2x80x98city booklet.xe2x80x99 Thereafter, responsive to specific end user requests detailing one or more starting points and one or more destinations, routes are selected by joining paths of way points based on their locations to produce either a pictograph or a route listing. In either the point-to-point or regional approach, the end user is guided by visually correlating the photographs of actual way points with superimposed directional arrows and descriptive text with the road actually being traveled as seen through their windshield.